Who Will Define the Business Landscape of the 6G Era?

China is accelerating 6G research and industrial planning. Many listed companies are moving into key 6G technologies, and global competition over 6G standards is intensifying.

On January 13, 2026, the China Economic Media Think Tank and Business School magazine held a closed door seminar titled “Who Will Define the Business Landscape of the 6G Era.” Experts from industry, capital, and policy discussed future “golden scenarios,” 6G standards, bottlenecks, and paths to commercial viability.

Who Can Shape 6G Standards?

Zhang Yue, chairman of Haohan Shendu and director roles in AI and intelligent internet associations in china, argued that the 6G business landscape is essentially about who has the power to define it. Technical standards, industry rules, and business models are shaped not only by technology but also by national strength, industrial systems, and strategic competition. In his view, 6G competition is first a contest between countries, then between companies.

Liu Jiuru, chairman of the Digital Economy Committee of the China Electronic Information Industry Federation, said 6G is in a key pre standard competition window. Technical routes are intertwined with geopolitics and industry rule making. Control over standards will strongly influence the future industry map.

Key considerations for 6G standards include:

• Global alignment on technical routes to avoid fragmentation
• Integration of ground cellular networks, medium and low orbit satellites, and high altitude platforms in an air space ground network
• Deep native integration of AI and communications, which is becoming a global focus

Pan Pengdan, secretary general of the Data Intelligence Committee of the China Information Association, warned that standards for new technologies should not lock in the future too early. She promoted guiding and evaluation standards instead of rigid frameworks. Her “intelligent agent maturity assessment” standard attracted nearly 50 participating organizations and aims to guide development rather than restrict innovation.

Key Bottlenecks in 6G Development

Experts noted that understanding 5G’s progress is necessary before judging 6G’s direction.

Liu Jiuru said that after more than six years of 5G commercialization, China has built over 60 percent of the world’s 5G base stations, has more than 1.1 billion users, and supports applications across 86 major sectors of the national economy. Despite these figures, operators face a problem of rising usage without matching revenue growth.

Three major issues appeared in 5G:

1. Lack of killer applications, with most consumer needs already met by 4G
2. Fragmented industry applications, especially in industrial internet, where customization is high and replication is costly
3. High network construction and operating costs that do not translate into stable revenue growth

6G aims to move from connecting people and objects to enabling “intelligent connectivity.” It would integrate communication, sensing, computing, AI, and satellite networks as a foundation for intelligent interconnection of everything.

Digital expert Lai Jiacai said the biggest bottleneck is not research output but turning results into real industry capability. Many achievements remain in labs and papers, far from market use. He argued that commercialization thinking must be included early in research.

He gave the example of the low altitude economy, especially drones for emergency rescue. These scenarios demand very high communication performance and reliability. With more extreme weather and accidents, demand for efficient emergency communication is rising. If 6G can deliver breakthroughs here, it could solve real problems and create new growth points.

Realistic Paths to a Business Loop

From a business perspective, 6G may reshape how industries operate rather than only creating a few new sectors. Competition in manufacturing has shifted from single technologies to full supply chains and ecosystems.

Zhang Yi, general manager of Xitong Wuzhou, described a technical breakthrough by a team led by former Sina technology director Jiang Xizhuo. They developed reliable congestion control and flow control algorithms based on UDP. While keeping UDP’s high speed, their software algorithms add strong reliability. In multi scenario tests, transmission efficiency was on average more than 10 times higher than traditional TCP, with peaks of 10 to 100 times. This could help China achieve globally leading data speeds under the same bandwidth during the 15th Five Year Plan period.

He emphasized learning from 5G and following principles of balancing software and hardware and improving efficiency and cost effectiveness. The focus should be not only on higher bandwidth but also on better bandwidth utilization, moving from information highways to “global data high speed rail.”

From an investment view, Zhang Jun, partner at Tii Capital, said 6G should not be defined only by technical metrics but by whether it can support clear, scalable, and sustainable application systems. Without real scenarios, standards risk becoming empty and failing to form a loop from technology to deployment to monetization.

Liu Jiuru assessed opportunities from two angles: certainty and growth flexibility.

• In the next 3 to 5 years, relatively certain areas include new network infrastructure, integrated space ground networks, core components, and testing equipment
• In 5 to 10 years, less certain but higher potential areas include integrated sensing communication computing intelligence, deep vertical industry collaboration, immersive interaction, and interconnection of intelligent agents

Across these areas, AI is seen not only as an amplifier but also as a key factor that could shape 6G’s technical routes and value boundaries.

On 6G and AI integration, Pan Pengdan said the key is whether AI can be embedded in a native way into 6G networks and standards, not just added as an extra layer.

Zhang Yue added that commercialization will change as intelligent agents, robots, and automated systems become common. The first large scale 6G users may be machines rather than people. Low latency and ultra high bandwidth will support agent collaboration, brain computer interface research, and new human machine relationships.

In this sense, 6G is viewed as a social infrastructure linking computing, energy, intelligence, and services. Its business impact could be far beyond current imagination.

The full value of 6G may not appear in the first years. But it is likely that those who coordinate standards, scenarios, and ecosystems early will gain an advantage in the next wave of communication and intelligent integration.